This invention relates to a method for the manufacture of structural composition panel boards and, more particularly, relates to a method of producing composition paper flake boards from recycle waste paper, and to the product produced thereby.
The recycling of waste paper is highly desirable in that waste paper is being generated in ever-increasing quantities, particularly in urban areas. Conventional methods of waste treatment and disposal, such as by landfill and by incineration, are becoming impractical for the increasing quantities of waste paper in that landfill areas are becoming scarce and expensive and incineration, apart from being costly, is a significant contributor to air pollution.
Recycling of waste paper is desirable also in that the natural resources supplying pulp and wood products are being depleted at an increasing rate and, as population and industrial production continues to expand, salvage and re-use of solid waste must be successfully achieved to ease the demands on available natural resources.
Waste paper conventionally is re-used by repulping the waste paper and manufacturing various types of paper therefrom. However, conventional repulping has a number of inherent limitations in that the waste paper often contains additives, such as printing ink, sizing agents, wet strength resins, fillers and the like which adversely affect the products to be produced from the waste paper if these deleterious additives are permitted to remain and which may make the reclamation of the paper fibres prohibitively expensive if removed. In addition, repulping of paper requires the use of copious quantities of process water, the disposal of which augments water pollution problems.
Due to the presence of many different types and grades of waste paper in a mix, homogenity of paper is not permitted and the repulping and re-use of the variety of fibres from such a mix may not be technically and economically feasible. In addition, pulp and paper operations require expensive capital investments, which places severe economic constraints on the recycling of waste paper.
The method of my invention substantially overcomes many of the foregoing problems which limit the recycling and use of waste paper. Repulping of paper is not required and, therefore, process water which creates the possibility of water pollution is not needed in any large quantities. Additives inherently present in the original paper need not be removed and hetergenous paper waste need not be sorted. The method can be practiced economically in small plants and, thus, even small or medium sized municipalities can set up recycling plants with low capital investments for the recovery and re-use of waste paper.